Sanyo CE47FD51-B 47in LCD TV review

Summary

Our Score

6/10

Review Price free/subscription

Sanyo's latest LCD TV sure knows how to tick our ‘booyah' boxes. For starters, it's 47in across. Check. Next, it's got a full HD resolution. Check. And finally it costs a really pretty puny £1336 - which merits a check for both us and our bank manager. All that's left to do is impress us with its other features and performance, and ‘job's a good ‘un', as they up North.

Considering it has clearly been built to a price, Sanyo's CE47FD51-B is really not a bad looker at all. A matt black colour is wrapped around a really quite stylish mix of curves and angles, with a tasteful arced bottom edge being particularly easy on the eye. The only things letting the side down a touch are the facts that the set is a bit chunkier than most, and also looks just a bit plasticky in its finish.
Connectivity is perfectly respectable, with two HDMIs and a component jack for HD duties, a D-Sub PC interface, Scarts and even a digital audio output and a subwoofer output. These latter two jacks are particularly thoughtful additions at this price, with one allowing you to pass digital audio tracks received via the HDMIs through to a suitable AV receiver, while the other lets you ramp up the bass via an external subwoofer speaker if it turns out the Sanyo's own speakers are lacking in the low frequency department.

Not surprisingly the HDMIs on a set this affordable don't meet the latest v1.3 standard. But they are, at least, able to take in 1080p/24 feeds from suitably capable HD DVD and Blu-ray players, an ability that we'd hardly take as read on a budget TV - even one with a full HD pixel count.